Scholars file challenges to 9/11 NIST reports

Submissions may shatter the cover-up, founder declares

Madison, WI (PRWEB) March 30, 2007 – Some members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan organization of students, experts and scholars dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about 9/11, have filed complaints against the National Institute of Standards and Technology for legal defects in its studies of events of 9/11 involving the Twin Towers and Building 7. James H. Fetzer, the society’s founder, believes these actions have the potential to break the back of the cover-up that has enveloped these events.

“It would be nice if the government would tell us the truth about our own history,” Fetzer said. “But all we get from the President, the Vice President, the Secretary of State and former Secretary of Defense is a ‘song and dance’ that keeps the American people in ignorance.” The complaints have been filed by Ed Hass, who edits The Muckraker Report; Morgan Reynolds, past Chief Economist in the Department of Labor in the Bush administration; and Judy Wood, former professor of mechanical engineering at Clemson University. Reynolds and Wood are both members of the society.

The complaints, which are archived and available to the public at www.ocio.os.doc.gov/ITPolicyandPrograms/Information_Quality/PROD01_002619, fall into three categories. The complaint by Ed Haas concerns claims that NIST has advanced asserting that it has found “no evidence of a blast or controlled demolition event” in relation to Building 7. Haas alleges that this is false and misleading insofar as NIST has never looked for evidence of this kind. Moreover, NIST denies having found any “corroborating evidence” supporting the hypothesis that the building was brought down by controlled demolition, which is inconsistent with evidence it acknowledges.

Indeed, in his complaint, Haas observes that the gross features of the collapse of Building 7—a 6.6 second, complete, symmetrical, and total collapse—qualify as evidence of controlled demolition of that building, which contradicts NIST’s affirmations. In a second complaint, Haas observes that conflicts of interest affect using many of the same scientists, experts, subcontractors, and others who were responsible for research on the Twin Towers to conduct research on Building 7 as well, which tends to taint their objectivity.

“Building 7 has been of special interest lately,” Fetzer remarked, “since archival footage from the BBC has been discovered, where a female reporter is explaining that Building 7 has also collapsed.” The problem is that the building only collapsed at 5:20 PM, while and she is reporting it at 4:57 PM, which is 23 minutes too soon. “You can find a dozen articles about it on 911scholars.org, which is the society’s web site. You can even see Building 7 clearly standing in the background over her left shoulder in these news video clips, which raises disturbing questions about the media in all of this.”

The second complaint, which has been filed by Morgan Reynolds, disputes NIST’s explanations of the jetliner-shaped holes in the Twin Towers. According to NIST, the North Tower (WTC-1) was hit by Flight AA 11, a Boeing 767, traveling at an estimated 443 mph, yet its tail section disappears within 0.25 seconds. And it claims that the South Tower (WTC-2) was hit by Flight UA 175, another Boeing 767, flying at an estimated speed of 542 mph, where its tail section disappears into the building in approximately 0.20 seconds.

Reynolds observes that the planes are 159 feet in length, which means that, on the NIST account, Flight AA 11 lost only 2% of its speed in despite massive resistance from a steel/concrete building. Similarly for Flight UA 175, the airspeed of which did not decline in spite of its impact with steel walls and concrete floors, as well as the dense steel core consisting of 47 columns. The complaint contends that real jetliners would have been dramatically slowed by the impact, which implies that the NIST report is not only factually wrong but also physically impossible in violating physical laws.

“Morgan poses a substantial number of anomalies that NIST will be hard pressed to explain,” Fetzer said. “But the greatest challenge to its scientific integrity is posed by the complaint filed by Judy Wood, which is a veritable tour de force.” While the documents filed by Haas and Reynolds run less than ten pages in length, the one filed by Wood runs forty-three pages, including photographs and other supporting evidence. “It is a powerful critique that demonstrates the government has completely and utterly failed to explain what happened to the World Trade Center on that tragic and fateful day.”

Fetzer characterizes Dr. Wood, who has degrees in civil engineering, engineering mechanics, and materials engineering science, as the leading expert on technical aspects of the destruction of the World Trade Center. “There are experts in many areas of science and of engineering studying 9/11,” he explained, “but she has degrees that are centrally focused on critical areas in which competence is required to begin to understand what happened on 9/11. No one else in the 9/11 community comes close to her level of expertise.”

Her complaint, technically, Request for Correction, like the others, asserts that the basic integrity of NIST’s report, called NCSTAR 1, is lacking because, by its own admission, NIST did not investigate the actual destruction of the World Trade Center Towers: “The focus of the investigation was on the sequence of events from the instance of aircraft impact to the initiation of collapse for each tower.” This means that the NIST report does not actually include the collapse behavior of the towers after the conditions for their initiation were realized, which NIST refers to as “the probable collapse sequence.”

“ NIST, of course, claims that it was the impact of the aircraft and the jet-fuel based fires, which caused the steel to weaken and bring about a collapse,” Fetzer said. “But the buildings were designed to withstand such occurrences and the steel had been certified by UL to 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit for several hours without weakening. The fires only burned around 500 degrees for less than an hour (in the case of WTC-2) and an hour-and-a-half (in the case of WTC-1), so NIST really doesn’t even reach the point at which a ‘collapse’ of any kind would be ‘initiated.’ The situation is quite remarkable.”

Thus, to this day, Americans have not been given any explanation whatsoever for the destruction of the WTC complex that comports with information and quality standards. In contrast, Dr. Wood's RFC contains a stunning array of visual evidence that confirms highly unusual energy effects seen by all as the Twin Towers were almost instantaneously destroyed in less time than it would take a billiard ball to hit the ground if dropped from the height of 110 stories, a result she demonstrates in relation to the law of falling bodies.

Wood also points out other compelling evidence that NIST ignored, including visual evidence of unusual and unexplained devastation to vehicles parked blocks away from the WTC complex, including some with disintegrated engine blocks but unexploded gas tanks. And she notes the peculiar damage of perpendicular gouges in WTC-3, WTC-4, WTC-5, and WTC-6, as well as other distinctive effects, such as cylindrical holes in these buildings and even in the street, which remain unexplained by NIST to this day. “These outcomes appear to be inexplicable if only conventional explosives, much less fires, were involved,” Fetzer said. “Cars burned, paper did not.”

Indeed, Wood goes further and points out that the huge quantity of dust resulting from the visible process of steel disintegration, some of which was captured on film, combined with these other effects suggest the probable use of high-tech, directed energy weapons. Another element of Wood's proof is the almost complete lack of even a rubble pile at the WTC complex. “Where did it go?”, she asks. Whatever the source of energy and heat may have been, it had no effect upon massive quantities of paper floating around the city.

Jerry Leaphart, a Connecticut-based trial lawyer, who is also a member of Scholars, represents the complainants in this effort. Leaphart states that NIST now has 60 days to respond to the RFC. After that, an appeal can be taken or other legal action could be pursued. “Anyone with a serious interest in what happened at the World Trade Center has to read Wood’s complaint,” Fetzer added. “It is a stunning indictment of the NIST’s failure to come to grips with the problem. In my opinion, these submissions have the potential to shatter the cover-up in one of the greatest murder mysteries in history. We are all indebted to them for doing this.”